My Process | How to design the world's most entertaining executive dinners

From discovery to dining room.

01

I read primary sources, watch your videos, listen to your podcasts, and learn your company, solutions, competitors, differentiation, and (if relevant) your product end-to-end.
Week 1
02

The fun, creative part for me: ideating possible dinner experiences until I have some worth sharing for approval. I have a long article explaining some of the ways I come up with the concepts.
Weeks 2-3
03

Write the show. Every word. By hand. Every slide. By hand. Scripts run roughly an hour — enough air for guests to eat, drink, and make new friends.
Weeks 3-5
04

Optional, but highly recommended: stage it for the home team. Internal-only audience: key field marketers, sales leaders, and any C-suite who needs to approve. It’s practice—and more importantly, feedback.
Week 5-7
05

Help you fill the room. I’ll help with landing-page copy, photography (without spoiling surprises), outbound email & call scripts, and 5-10 minutes on your Sales All-Hands to fire them up about what their guests will experience.
Week 8-10
06

Showtime! We pick the cities you want to generate pipeline in, book high-end private dining rooms, and start performing.
Week 10-12

Props, gadgets, and the occasional flame.

Champagne Saber

Sure, I can saber—but I get far more enjoyment out of teaching others. Over 50 guests have successfully sabered with 0 injuries to date. To begin with sabrage is to set the tone that this is no ordinary dinner.
Port Tongs

Port tonging is an elegant ritual to avoid pushing the cork into the bottle by using hot iron tongs and a freezing shave brush leverage thermal shock to open the bottle below the cork.
Blue Blazer Tankards

A 150-year-old cocktail named for the blue flame that arcs between two stainless tankards as you pour overproof whiskey lit on fire into boiling water. Like a hot toddy but less delicious, far more dramatic.
Confetti Cannon

Pro tip: restaurants are not excited about confetti in their private dining rooms. I have one trick that makes it work when the concept calls for my Chauvet DJ Funfetti Shot Confetti Launcher.
UV Flashlights

If invisible ink fits the concept, I am intimately familiar with the printer, ink, stealth paper, and UV lights it takes to make it pop. The Dark Funnel, Shadow IT, Shadow spend are all good candidates.
Hot Towel Warmer

My ForPro 23L Hot Towel Warmer has 50,000+ road miles because ending dinners with personalized s'mores of melted chocolate and gooey marshmallows demands better than a bistro napkin.
Deal-Closing Box

A small, dignified sign atop a handmade wooden box with an outsized impact. Reserved for the right moment, the right deal, and the right room.
AR Headset

Between Microsoft discontinuing the HoloLens, Apple ignoring the Vision Pro, and Meta writing off $80B for the Metaverse, mixed reality’s had a tough go of late. I have one anyway.
Wordplay

Alliteration, anagrams, acronyms, puns and portmanteaus — I love them, and most dinner guests do too. You never pay extra for wordplay. I do it for the love of the game.